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On August 2, 2008 the UAE English-language daily The National (www.thenational.ae ) published an article critical of Al-Jazeera's coverage of the release of Samir Kuntar*, and on Al-Jazeera's influence in the Arab world, specifically among its academic elite. The author, Sultan Al-Qassemi, is a Sharjah-based businessman, a graduate of the AmericanUniversity of Paris, and founder of Barjeel Securities in Dubai.

The following are excerpts:

"The Problem with Watching Al-Jazeera in Arabic Isn't Just That the Channel Gives Ample Airtime to Militants and Terrorists to Share Their 'Perspective' - But Because Its Conspiracy Theories and Controversies Give the Station So Much Influence on the Easily Swayed Arab Mindset"

"It's a frightening statistic: According to a Jordan-based agency called the Knowledge World Centre for Polls, 98 percent of political science and media professors in the Arab world claim to watch at least three hours of Al-Jazeera daily, labeling it as the 'the most respected news agency.'What is frightening about that number isn't that 98 percent of Arab political science professors admit to watching three hours of television a day, but that they watch three hours of the same television each day.

"The problem with watching Al-Jazeera in Arabic isn't just that the channel gives ample airtime to militants and terrorists to share their 'perspective,'but because its conspiracy theories and controversies give the station so much influence on the easily swayed Arab mindset.For those who consider the English version of Al-Jazeera to be distinct, the channel's chairman, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, promised that it 'will be no different.'

"In 2004, Al-Jazeera published a 'Code of Ethics' document that is posted on its website. The very first pledge by the Qatar-based channel includes 'giving no priority to political considerations over professional ones.' There are several books that disprove Al-Jazeera's claims of neutrality.One is by Dr Mamoun Fandy, a distinguished author and senior fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, called (Un) Civil War of Words: The Politics of Arab Media. [1]

"An example that demonstrates Dr. Fandy's belief in the lack of Al-Jazeera's impartiality was evident recently when the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah scored yet another media coup with the release of Samir Kuntar, the ultimate propaganda tool from Israel. A bigger media prize than the potential freeing of Marwan Al-Barghouti, the Palestinian activist who called for restricting attacks on the Israeli Defense Force inside the occupied territories and condemned attacks on civilians over the Green Line, Hizbullah's latest trophy, handed over by Israel after almost three decades in prison, is a far more valuable pawn.

"Kuntar was convicted when he was 17 years old (albeit in an enemy court in 1980), of murdering, among others, Einat, an innocent four-year-old Israeli girl he dragged from bed at night to the seashore and whose fragile head, the court was told, he had smashed with the butt of his rifle. True to its spirit of courting controversy, Al-Jazeera celebrated Kuntar's release like no other television channel.

"The station not only repeatedly interviewed 'the hero' but brazenly threw Kuntar, live on international television, a surprise birthday party to celebrate the occasion. The party, organized by Al-Jazeera came complete with fireworks, a full band, and a giant birthday cake along with the picture of the Hizbullah leader Hassan Nassrallah. [2]

"The channel's Beirut bureau chief, Ghassan Bin Jiddou, sporting a pink tie for the occasion, repeatedly addressed the terrorist as 'my brother' saying: 'You deserve even more than this.'

"Number three on Al-Jazeera's Code of Ethics list: Give full consideration to the feelings of the victims of crime.

"Is Qatar, the channel's backer, fully aware of the danger it creates by associating itself with this sort of programming: a birthday party for a convicted child murderer? In fact, all Arabs should re-examine their understanding of what characterizes a hero; take a look at your own child and imagine just how frightened the four-year-old Einat must have been.

"The unrepentant Kuntar later told Al-Jazeera how 'wonderful' he thought the assassination of the former Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat had been, and how he looked forward to 'similar assassinations.'

"Although we may never know what psychological pressures Kuntar endured during his incarceration in Israel's prisons, we do know that he was allowed to marry and to graduate from Israel's Open University with a degree in political science, rendering him an ideal Al-Jazeera viewer.

"Hafez al-Mirazi, the station's former Washington bureau chief, once compared Al-Jazeera to the BBC in Britain, claiming that it receives government funding but maintains a neutral stance. Nothing could be further from the truth. How would we view the BBC if it organized, say, a birthday party for the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic? Last year, al-Mirazi quit the channel, accusing its new management of turning it into Hamas Television.

"The privileged treatment that Kuntar received courtesy of Al-Jazeera was the coup de grace to their claims of neutrality. Ironically, of all the world's news channels, it is Al-Jazeera and Fox News who repeatedly emphasize their impartiality. Which brings to mind a friend of mine's adaptation of the famous Joseph Goebbels' dictum that characterized so much of Nazi Germany's propaganda: 'When you want to get away with a lie,' he said, 'you must repeat it many times over and believe it to be the truth. Only then will others believe you.'
"It certainly works for Al-Jazeera. Just ask 98 percent of Arab political science professors."

*Please note: The proper spelling is "Samir Al-Quntar." MEMRI is spelling the name as "Samir Kuntar" in accordance with conventional Western media coverage.

... "Kuntar was convicted when he was 17 years old (albeit in an enemy court in 1980), of murdering, among others, Einat, an innocent four-year-old Israeli girl he dragged from bed at night to the seashore and whose fragile head, the court was told, he had smashed with the butt of his rifle. True to its spirit of courting controversy, Al-Jazeera celebrated Kuntar's release like no other television channel. ...

Somewhere I remember a passage about a millstone and the deep blue sea. Justice will be served to cowardly savages like this either in this world or the next, and in this case, probably both. There is no justification for this kind of behavior in the name of any god, or in this case, the demons of the Arabian desert. And Muslims wonder why so many people on this planet view their religion a demonic death cult.

Somewhere I remember a passage about a millstone and the deep blue sea. Justice will be served to cowardly savages like this either in this world or the next, and in this case, probably both. There is no justification for this kind of behavior in the name of any god, or in this case, the demons of the Arabian desert. And Muslims wonder why so many people on this planet view their religion a demonic death cult.

And thus desertscout, only one of the million or more reasons I have come to understand that those that actualy believe the words of Muhammad are not from God and those that practice those words in their lives practice evil as good does not dwell in them. I came to such a conclusion using only Muhammad's own words.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

"There is no justification for this kind of behavior in the name of any god, or in this case, the demons of the Arabian desert. And Muslims wonder why so many people on this planet view their religion a demonic death cult. "

Muslims are a trojan horse! They get inside your mind and confuse you. They get inside your society and spread chaos. They get hired by your organizations and work fraud. They eat from social programs and bite the hand that feeds them. It is a parasitic!

Incidentally, the trojan horse is also a virus. Antivirus programs cannot clean the infected file. The only way to deal with a Trojan Horse Virus is to quarantine it and then delete.

"There is no justification for this kind of behavior in the name of any god, or in this case, the demons of the Arabian desert. And Muslims wonder why so many people on this planet view their religion a demonic death cult. "
... quarantine it and then delete.

Demonic is a very accurate analysis. Look into the eyes of many Muslims and you can see the demon peering out at you. It's hard to pity a pathetic ****** that wants to kill or enslave you. We saw what centuries of hate came to in the former Yugoslavia; a metronome of back and forth hate crimes and atrocities. This is Islam's future legacy for the world, all in the name of their 'desert demon(s).'

" ... quarantine it and then delete." A totally appropriate response, but one that the secular, PC governments of the 'free' world will never agree upon. Maybe India and, or China will though. One can only hope!!!

Westerners are taught that the Christian Crusades are a unique and eternal stain on our history. Each episode of this series exposes a Jihadist campaign from the past as a refutation of this self-loathing attitude in the West.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Israel sites its military facilities as far from civilians as it can. Palestinians and other Arabs could easily attack these and avoid civilian deaths. They choose not to. They choose to attack civilian areas instead. Why?

Because Palestinian and other Arab fighters are happy to kill enemy civilians of all ages. They are all infidels - it doesn't matter to them. Because Palestinian and Islamist fighters have no morality, no honour and no sense of shame. They do not have the code of morality that normal people have, such as avoiding the innocent in war.

Because attacking civilians is safer. Attacking an IDF base is extremely dangerous, and liable to get you killed without achieving anything. Much easier to attack defenceless women and children in homes and shops - if your morality allows you live with that.

Hezbollah (and Palestinians and other Arabs) could easily launch their military attacks far from their own civilians. They choose not to. They choose to embed their military in their own civilians. Why?

Because it will restrain the Israelis, because they are civilized. Israel doesn't want to kill enemy civilians, so they can be used as effective human shields. Hiding in civilians gives the Islamists a military advantage. This would not of course work in reverse. Israel embedding any target in civilians would not restrain Islamists attacking it in any way.

Because if enemy civilians are killed by Israel, it is good for the enemy. It may be the only thing that will stop Israel, if the (normally hopeless) Islamist military attacks can't. Why? Not so much because of international opinion as because Israeli domestic opinion will restrain their military. Again, this would not work in reverse. Israeli civilian deaths would encourage, not demoralise or slow down, their enemies.

The Palestinian way of war.

Of course, this is only one aspect of the shameful Palestinian/Islamist way of war. Another aspect would show the Palestinian "soldier" shooting into the baby carriage when it was alone.

Here's a question: Why don't Israeli civilians form human shields around targets? If you can answer that question, you are well on the way to seeing past the propaganda and finally understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The fact that Palestinian girls aren't being killed indicates that the Israelis aren't randomly killing civilians, but engaging in combat, and only those stupid enough to be in the middle of the combat are in danger. In fact, more Israeli girls are killed than Palestinian girls.

The Palestinians use children in war

Israel's rules of engagement against children and youths throwing rocks:

First, it should be noted that if you don't want to get hurt, stay at home. Don't throw rocks. Parents, don't let your children throw rocks and Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, while snipers fire on Israeli troops from the background. Ultimately, that is the answer. Whatever rules of engagement Israel uses, children participating in riots and shooting will get killed. The answer is children should stay at home.

Let's Talk About the Children by Naomi Ragen - "I cannot help but gasp every time I see it: children in front of tanks, throwing stones at armed soldiers. And nowhere, but nowhere, is there a single mother running to grab their hands and lead them home. Where are the Palestinian mothers? And what in Heaven's name are they thinking when they let their children endanger their lives, and the lives of others"

None of the above are very convincing in showing actual intent by the Israeli state to kill civilians. Again, it seems to any objective observer that the Israelis try to follow the rules of war.

THE CHALLENGE: If you believe the Israelis are "just as bad" as the Palestinians, find me a single incident since 1960 in which the Israeli state deliberately targeted and tried to kill civilians in the same way the Palestinians do every day. The Palestinians routinely and deliberately target and attack schools, shops, restaurants, nightclubs, buses, aircraft, civilians in their cars and houses, and so on, with no military target in sight. Show me a single incident since 1960 when the Israelis did this. Tell me about it here.

In general, I have no wish to defend Irgun (dissolved 1948) or the Stern Gang (dissolved 1948).

The Palestinians try to kill civilians:

There is no ambiguity on the Palestinian side. It is policy (and always has been) to deliberately target and kill all civilians, from the old to the young. Endless attacks are made on civilian targets, with no military target in sight. Islam seems to possess no fundamental rules of warfare. Judaism seems clearly morally superior to Islam, since it opposes targeting civilians in warfare.

Suicide bombers believe they will go to some kind of paradise in the sky (or somewhere) as a reward for killing innocents. Unfortunately for them, there is no such place. They are just dead, and so are their victims.

The killing of the children in the Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 sums up the mental sickness (and I am being quite literal) of Palestinian society. It's not just that they targeted women and children. It's that they openly celebrated it afterwards.
Young fascist students at An-Najah University, Nablus, West Bank, celebrate the killing of the babies at the Sbarro pizzeria.
LGF calls it the "University of Death" (and here).
Picture from ADL. Also here.
Picture credit Associated Press.

The leader behind this attack on defenceless children was the evil mass murderer Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Justice came calling for him in March 2004.

The killing of children

The worst thing about the Palestinians is that - unlike the Israelis - the Palestinians deliberately target women and children.

The Palestinians have no basic human morality in their conduct of war, and believe in killing all Jews, including children, toddlers and babies. Opinion polls show the majority of Palestinians support killing Israeli civilians. The Israelis are not like this. No opinion poll in Israel has ever shown majority support for killing Palestinian civilians. The Israelis fight a war against military targets. The Palestinians' war consists of almost nothing but war crimes against civilians.

The creepy Irish poet Tom Paulin exemplifies the moral sickness on the western left.

Tom Paulin's call for the killing of Jewish civilians (also here and here). See transcript, 4-10 April 2002: "If there is one thing Paulin clearly abhors about Israel, it is the Brooklyn-born Jewish settlers. "They should be shot dead," he says forcefully. "I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them.""

The use of "Nazi" language is nauseating - like, as if someone like Paulin would have been opposed to the Nazis first time round.

5 year old Danielle Shefi, shot dead cowering in her bedroom with her baby brothers by brave Islamic fascist heroes, 27 April 2002, a few days after Paulin's call for such killings. They also shot her 4 year old baby brother.

His ignorant article is full of unthinking assumptions, such as the assumption that the suicide bomber must be living a "wretched" life of "dispossession" and "lack of self-determination" (as opposed, for example, to simply being a religious fanatic).

The Hatuel family (and here) - 4 children shot dead with their mummy, May 2004. The idealistic twentysomething Islamic fascists moved in on the stopped car and shot the four children - including a 2 year old in a baby seat - repeatedly at close range.

The Palestinians were not ashamed of this sick war crime committed in their name, but rather celebrated it. Also here. The thug Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority described the killers as "heroic". They described the children as "terrorists". Al Jazeera jihad TV described the killing as a "resistance strike". None of this is unusual.

The leader behind this attack on defenceless children was Mohammed Khalil, leader of Islamic Jihad in southern Gaza. Justice came calling for him in Sept 2005.

A commenter expresses how I feel: "That murder has haunted me since it happened. What kind of human could machine-gun a baby in her carseat? Hatred, pure evil."

Einat Haran, a 4 year old girl whose head was smashed on a rock until she was dead by the Lebanese monster Samir Kuntar in 1979.

Incredibly, Israel did not execute Samir Kuntar but rather gave him a comfortable life in prison.

Palestinians dance in celebration at the killing of Israeli women and children in Aug 2004.
Images from Reuters. Found through here. Original source lost.
They are celebrating the Islamist suicide bombing of two buses of women and children doing back-to-school shopping in Beersheba, which killed 16 innocent civilians - including a 3 year old little boy, Aviel Atash - with no military target anywhere in sight. The women and children on the bus were the targets. And the Palestinians are not embarrassed by this. Instead they dance in the streets.

Comment on the above: "I apologize for re-stating the obvious, but if Americans or Israelis openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians, pictures of the celebration would be plastered on the front page of every newspaper on the planet."

Opinion polls show that the majority of Palestinians celebrate killing civilians. The Palestinians, with their primitive racist tribalism, want to kill women and children. The Israelis, with their sophisticated modern universal morality, don't. They only want to kill combatants. That is the difference between them. There are other differences of course, such as that Israelis believe in democracy and Palestinians are fighting to set up a tyranny. But the most fundamental distinction is that of targeting non-combatants. That is the difference between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

An attempted answer: Leftist Max Blumenthal posts a video of American Jews celebrating the attack on Hamas in Gaza in Jan 2009.

This is too ambiguous. After all, in these attacks the Israelis killed terror leaders Nizar Rayan and Said Seyam, and hundreds of Hamas terrorists. There would not be anything wrong with Jews celebrating that.

What we need is something unambiguous - an attack where only civilians die, and no one else, and then Jews or Israelis celebrate. Tell me about such an event here.

Afterwards: "But in the fanatic Jewish precincts in Hebron, settlers danced in the streets and praised Goldstein's martyrdom. The Purim parades continued as if nothing had happened, and some residents of Kiryat Arba called his act "a great gift." One settler, stopped by a soldier as she tried to assault a Palestinian journalist, shrieked, "We should kill 500, not 50!""

Shame on those settlers.

There are still some differences with Palestinian terror attacks though:

Every Israeli party condemned the Cave of the Patriarchs attack in absolute terms.

The killer, Baruch Goldstein, belonged to the "Kach" movement. The entire "Kach" movement was outlawed by the Israeli government. Providing funds or material support to Kach was made a crime.

The Israeli government arrested Goldstein's associates.

The Israeli government declined to prosecute the Arabs who beat Goldstein to death after he was disarmed.

The Israeli government outlawed and destroyed a shrine erected at Goldstein's grave. The Israeli Army bulldozed the shrine and prayer area set up at his grave.

Synagogues raised funds for Goldstein's victims.

A poll found only 4 percent of Israelis supported Goldstein.

No political party in Israel since 1994 has ever approved of the killing or praised Goldstein.

There were no further attacks by Goldstein's people. His organisation simply disappeared. His attack was a one-off.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

02 Oct. 2009: Younis Abdullah Muhammad from RevolutionIslam.com is actively recruiting shahids on American streets to go and kill American troops in the ME. Just listen to the 'imam' spout his hate. Now remember; Abdullah says, "All Muslims good; all kafirs bad!!!"

A new study released Sunday shows that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. The “German Situation” study, which is conducted by the University of Bielefeld Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, found that across Europe in the last year, “Islamophobia” has declined, while anti-Semitic incidents have increased. True to form for such studies, however, it ignored the persistence and strength of Islamic anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism in the Islamic world has often been attributed to the baneful influence of Christianity. Many analysts assert that the Islamic designation of Jews (as well as Christians) as “People of the Book” indicates a higher level of respect for them than was manifested by Christians who derided Jews as bestial “Christ-killers.” Journalist Lawrence Wright asserts in this vein in The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11:

Until the end of World War II … Jews lived safely—although submissively—under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice [anti-Semitism]. After the war, Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

This is a common view, but in reality there is a strong native strain of anti-Semitism in Islam, which is rooted in the Qur’an. The Muslim holy book contains a great deal of material that forms the foundation for a hatred of Jews that exists independently of the Christian variety. It is also, in many ways, more virulent and harder to eradicate. The Qur’an portrays the Jews as the craftiest, most persistent, and most implacable enemies of the Muslims—and there is no Muslim equivalent of the Second Vatican Council to mitigate against destructive interpretations. The Qur’anic material on the Jews remains the prism through which far too many Muslims see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and Jews in general—to this day.

A vivid illustration of this came in 2004 from Islam Online, a website founded by, among others, the internationally influential Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in 1997. Although al-Qaradawi has won praise from Islamic scholar John Esposito for engaging in a “reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism, and human rights,” that “reformist” impulse doesn’t seem to carry over to his view of Jews (he has justified suicide bombings against Israeli civilians), or the view of them he has allowed to be published on Islam Online. In 2004 the site posted an article titled “Jews as Depicted in the Qur’an,” in which Sheikh ‘Atiyyah Saqr, the former head of the Fatwa Committee at the most respected institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, depicts Jews in a chillingly negative light, illustrated with abundant quotations from the Qur’an. Among other charges he levels at the Jews, Saqr says that they “used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah”; they “love to listen to lies”; they disobey Allah and ignore his commands; they wish “evil for people” and try to “mislead them”; and they “feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity.” He adds that “it is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents,” for “they are merciless and heartless.” And each charge he follows with Qur’anic citations.

Though he offers many examples of the alleged evil traits of the Jews supported by the Qur’an, Saqr doesn’t mention the notorious Qur’anic passages that depict an angry Allah transforming Jews into apes and pigs: 2:63–66; 5:59–60; and 7:166. The first of those passages depicts Allah telling the Jews who “profaned the Sabbath”: “Be as apes despicable!” It goes on to say that these accursed ones serve “as a warning example for their time and for all times to come.” The second has Allah directing Muhammad to remind the “People of the Book” about “those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil.” The third essentially repeats this, saying of the Sabbath-breaking Jews that when “in their insolence they transgressed (all) prohibitions,” Allah said to them, “Be ye apes, despised and rejected.”

In traditional Islamic theology these passages have not been considered to apply to all Jews. The classic Qur’anic commentator Isma’il bin ‘Amr bin Kathir al Dimashqi (Ibn Kathir), whose commentary is widely distributed and respected among Muslims today, quotes earlier authorities saying that “those who violated the sanctity of the Sabbath were turned into monkeys, then they perished without offspring,” and that they “only lived on the earth for three days, for no transformed person ever lives more than three days.” While parts of the Qur’an are hostile to the Jews, Muhammad’s curse, in this case, was limited to these Sabbath-breakers, not to all Jews.

However, that hasn’t stopped contemporary jihadists from frequently referring to Jews as the “descendants of apes and swine.” The implication is that today’s Jews are bestial in character and are the enemies of Allah, just as the Sabbath-breakers were. The grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the most respected cleric in the world among Sunni Muslims today, has called Jews “the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.” Saudi sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam of the principal mosque in the holiest city in Islam, Mecca, said in a sermon that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.”

Another Saudi sheikh, Ba’d bin Abdallah al-Ajameh al-Ghamidi, made the connection explicit: “The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places … is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam—which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam.” A 1996 Hamas publication says that today’s Jews are bestial in spirit, and this is a manifestation of the punishment of their forefathers. In January 2007, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas stated, “The sons of Israel are mentioned as those who are corrupting humanity on earth,” referring to Qur’an 5:64.

All this shows that leading Muslim authorities approach the Qur’an not as a document rooted in history, but as a blueprint for understanding the world today. Likewise, Sheikh ‘Atiyyah Saqr describes the Qur’anic teachings that because Jews “revolted against the Divine ordinances … they found no warm reception in all countries where they tried to reside. Rather, they would either be driven out or live in isolation.” Moreover, “Almighty Allah told us that He’d send to them people who’d pour on them rain of severe punishment that would last till the Day of Resurrection.” Then comes a threat: “All this gives us glad tidings of the coming victory of Muslims over them once Muslims stick to strong faith and belief in Allah and adopt the modern means of technology.” The “rain of severe punishment” resulting from adoption of the “modern means of technology” may come to fruition in Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambitions and implacable hostility to Israel. In January 2007 he warned that the “demise” of the “Zionist regime” is “imminent.” Does he plan to bring about that demise with a nuclear “rain of severe punishment”?

In the 1970s Sheikh Tantawi wrote a 700-page treatise, Jews in the Qur’an and the Traditions, in which he concluded:

[The] Qur’an describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah, corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness … only a minority of the Jews keep their word. … [A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not.

Nor is this just a modern view. The classic Qur’anic commentators not do not mitigate the Qur’an’s words against Jews, but only add fuel to the fire. Ibn Kathir explained Qur’an 2:61 (“They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah”) this way: “This Ayah [verse] indicates that the Children of Israel were plagued with humiliation, and that this will continue, meaning that it will never cease. They will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them, along with the disgrace that they feel inwardly.” Another Middle Ages commentator of lingering influence, ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Umar al-Baidawi, explains the same verse this way: “The Jews are mostly humiliated and wretched either of their own accord, or out of coercion of the fear of having their jizya [punitive tax] doubled.”

Ibn Kathir notes Islamic traditions that predict that at the end of the world, “the Jews will support the Dajjal (False Messiah), and the Muslims, along with ‘Isa [Jesus], son of Mary, will kill the Jews.”The idea in Islam that the end times will be marked by Muslims killing Jews comes from the prophet Muhammad himself, who said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’” This is, not unexpectedly, a favorite motif among contemporary jihadists. On March 30, 2007, a spokesman for Hamas, Dr. Ismail Radwan, said on Palestinian Authority television:

The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: “Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!”

We must remind our Arab and Muslim nation, its leaders and people, its scholars and students, remind them that Palestine and the Al Aqsa mosque will not be liberated through summits nor by international resolutions, but it will be liberated through the rifle. It will not be liberated through negotiations, but through the rifle, since this occupation knows no language but the language of force.… O Allah, strengthen Islam and Muslims, and bring victory to your Jihad-fighting worshipers, in Palestine and everywhere.… Allah take the oppressor Jews and Americans and their supporters!

The history of Jews who lived under Muslim rule is a more or less unbroken record of theologically sanctioned humiliation and wretchedness. Although, like the Christians, Jews were allowed to practice their religion within restrictions, they were seldom allowed to forget their humiliation. Although the strictness with which the laws of dhimmitude (the subservient status of Jews and Christians) were enforced varied, they were never abolished, and during times of relaxation the subject populations always lived in fear that they would be enforced with new stringency. Muslim rulers did not forget that the Qur’an mandates that both Jews and Christians must “feel themselves subdued.” One notable instance is recounted by the Arab historian Phillip Hitti: “The caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e. yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves, … and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle.” A millennium later, in 1888, little had changed. A Tunisian Jew noted:

The Jew is prohibited in this country to wear the same clothes as a Muslim and may not wear a red tarbush. He can be seen to bow down with his whole body to a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking him in the face, a gesture that can prove to be of the gravest consequence. Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has been the custom from time immemorial.

In 1291 Isaac ben Samuel, a noted Kabbalist and Palestinian Jew, sought refuge in a Christian-controlled area of Spain after the collapse of the last Crusader kingdom in the Levant. He explained, “For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew. For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, ‘Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael [Islam]. They [the rabbis] plead for mercy before the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, ‘Master of the World, either let us live beneath Thy shadow or else beneath that of the children of Edom’ (Talmud, Gittin 17a).”

Ben Samuel’s choice of Christian Spain is paradoxical, as Muslim Spain was supposed to have been a famous exception to the oppression of Jews that prevailed elsewhere among both Muslims and Christians. Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong enunciates the common wisdom when she says that “until 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively together in Muslim Spain—a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in Europe.” Even the U.S. State Department has proclaimed that “during the Islamic period in Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society in which vibrant exchanges of ideas took place.”

Yet the philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked, “You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us.…No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have.…We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.”

Notably, Maimonides directed that Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but not to Muslims. For Muslims, he said, will interpret what they are taught “according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason … they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them.” But the Christians, he said, “admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact”—as opposed to the Islamic view that the Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures. Christians, continued Maimonides, “do not find in their religious law any contradiction with ours.”

Even María Rosa Menocal, in her romantic and fantastic hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, acknowledges the second-class status to which Jews and Christians were relegated there. “In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax—no Muslims paid taxes—and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals.”

According to historian Richard Fletcher, “Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.” On December 30, 1066, about four thousand Jews in Granada were murdered by rioting Muslim mobs—more than would be killed in the Crusaders’ infamous Rhineland pogroms of the mid-twelfth century. What enraged the Granadan Muslims was the political power of the Jewish vizier Samuel ibn Naghrila and his son Joseph: the mob resented the fact that these men had authority over Muslims, which they saw as a “breach of sharia.” The mob was incited to kill the Jews by a poem composed by Muslim jurist Abu Ishaq: “I myself arrived in Granada and saw that these Jews were meddling in its affairs. … So hasten to slaughter them as a good work whereby you will earn God’s favor, and offer them up in sacrifice, a well-fattened ram.” The mob heeded his call. A Muslim chronicler (and later sultan of Granada), ‘Abd Allah, said that “both the common people and the nobles were disgusted by the cunning of the Jews, the notorious changes they had brought in the order of things, and the positions they occupied in violation of their pact [of second-class status].” He recounted that the mob “put every Jew in the city to the sword and took vast quantities of their property.”

In The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Andrew Bostom amasses an enormous amount of documentary evidence establishing the degradations the Jews suffered at the hands of Muslims throughout Islamic history. Bostom notes that jihadist designation of Jews as “apes and pigs,” in accord with the Qur’an, has ample historical precedent. Muhammad himself used it before ordering that every adult male of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe, be killed, calling the Jews “you brothers of monkeys.” The poem that inspired the Muslims to massacre the Jews in Granada in 1066 included the line, “Many a pious Muslim is in awe of the vilest infidel ape,” (referring to the Jewish vizier). Zaynu’d-Din ‘Ali b. Said, praised the anti-Jewish riots and massacres in Baghdad in 1291 (which spread widely in the region), saying, “These apish Jews are done away and shent [ruined].” Bostom mentions another slaughter:

Referring to the Jews as “brothers of apes,” who repeatedly blasphemed the prophet Muhammad, and whose overall conduct reflected their hatred of Muslims, the Moroccan cleric al-Maghili (d. 1505) fomented, and then personally led, a Muslim pogrom (in ~1490) against the Jews of the southern Moroccan oasis of Touat, plundering and killing Jews en masse, and destroying their synagogue in neighboring Tamantit. Al-Maghili’s virulent Islamic antisemitism was perhaps captured best in a line from a verse diatribe he composed: “Love of the Prophet requires hatred of the Jews.”

Nevertheless, historian Bernard Lewis asserts that overall, Jews had it better in the Islamic world than they did in Catholic Europe. “There is nothing in Islamic history,” he says, “to compare with the Spanish expulsion of Jews and Muslims, the Inquisition, the Auto da fe’s, the wars of religion, not to speak of more recent crimes of commission and acquiescence. There were occasional persecutions, but they were rare, and usually of brief duration, related to local and specific circumstances.” Dinesh D’Souza has made much of this in his recent attempts to portray Islam and Christianity as equally likely to give rise to violent impulses.

However, such judgments betray less about the historical data than they do about Westerners judging Christians more severely than Muslims. This is a venerable tradition, going back, as the Islamic scholar Ibn Warraq points out, to Voltaire and Edward Gibbon:

Gibbon, like Voltaire, painted Islam in as favorable a light as possible to better contrast it with Christianity. The English historian emphasized Muhammad’s humanity as a means of indirectly criticizing the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ. Gibbon’s anticlericalism led him to underline Islam’s supposed freedom from that accursed class, the priesthood. Indeed, the familiar pattern is reemerging—Islam is being used as a weapon against Christianity. Gibbon’s deistic view of Islam as a rational, priest-free religion, with Muhammad as a wise and tolerant lawgiver, enormously influenced the way all Europeans perceived their sister religion for years to come. Indeed, it established myths that are still accepted totally uncritically by scholars and laymen alike. Both Voltaire and Gibbon subscribed to the myth of Muslim tolerance, which to them meant Turkish tolerance.

Yet a question that is much more important than the respective awarding of historical points or demerits is whether Christian or Islamic anti-Semitism is likely to recur. Europe has in recent years grown hostile to Jews to an extent not seen since Nazism’s heyday, but the anti-Semites today are principally not native European Christians, but Muslim immigrants (and Muslims, by mid-century, could be the majority population of several European states).

In Britain, there were three times more anti-Semitic incidents in 2007 than there were in 1997. A December 2006 study, according to the Telegraph, determined that “in London and Manchester, where Muslims outnumber Jews by four to one, anti-Semitic offenses exceeded anti-Muslim offenses.” One rabbi was attacked in July 2006 by seven Pakistani Muslim teenagers, who shouted, “We are Pakistani, you are Jewish. We are going to kill you.” In Belgium in November 2006, according to Flanders News, “a group of young Turkish immigrants in the Limburg municipality of Beringen attacked a group of Jewish school children by throwing stones at them, shouting anti-Semitic slogans.” In summer 2006, after a Jewish man was assaulted in Oslo, Norwegian Jews were warned not to wear kippahs on the street, for fear they would be physically attacked.

And these are just a few recent examples of a long and ever lengthening string of such incidents. The European Union commissioned a report about the new rise of anti-Semitism in Europe in 2003, but buried it when its findings showed that anti-Semitic acts were largely the province of young Muslims. After an outcry, the report was released in 2004, but journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard noted that the results “had been consistently massaged by the EU watchdog to play down the role of North African youth.”

As time goes by, however, these new realities will be harder and harder to ignore.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

They are Nice and sexy,thus smart...as far as i have seen(i actually had a israeli girlfriend...in Ohrid...but she had to go home)

Quote:

Why everybody is war...

Not everybody!!!

Fanatics are in "holy war" against Israel-they think israel as a state should not exist!!

Palestinian people...i feel sorry about most of them because they are human's with red blood...but when you see the FIRST OBJECTIVE of HAMAS(DESTROY ISRAEL) and civilian loses in Suicide bomb attack,therefore What Israel is doing is natural according to Real politic Theory...thus it has a right to defend it's own citizen(nationality and religion are not important)...i remember one day when i really felt powerless...i never had felt like that....it was a day when suicide bomber killed adult's in night club in Israel...damn WHY??

What they did to deserve Death???

It's wort to mention that Sadam also was paying the suicide bombers family's...now syria and Iran are doing that!!

On Sunday, C-Span ran the Cooper Union panel with Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and — until recently — banned from America for funding terrorists and working with their networks. On the platform were Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, the moderator, and George Packer (who provided the only illuminating moment in the proceedings) and Joan Wallach Scott, a notorious academic enabler of Ramadan and terrorist Sami al-Arian, and a professor at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. Also present was Dalia Mogahed, a Muslim version of Scott. Ramadan claimed to be an all-American democrat (but kept attacking the Iraq war which brought democracy to millions of Muslims as “illegal”).

Mogahed and Scott deflected questions from Weisberg about the oppression of women in Islam — an international scandal — by 1) talking about economic inequality and joblessness among Muslim immigrants in Europe and 2) in Scott’s case — the oppression of women in Catholicism. This was an instance of immoral equivalence brought to a new low. Weisberg asked Ramadan about his revealing statement that there should be a “moratorium” on the stoning of women for alleged infidelity. Here Ramadan introduced a word he was to use throughout the evening: “contextualization” — the verbal equivalent of a fog machine. If you contextualized “stoning” you could forget the barbarity of it and see it as a cultural oddity which needed to be reconsidered. Wallach Scott, professing to be a “feminist,” thought the moratorium to be a good idea, and in doing so raised progressive hypocrisy to new levels.

The discussion got really interesting when Packer brought up the fact that Ramadan’s grandfather had declared the Hitlerite grand mufti of Jerusalem — the father of Palestinian nationalism — a hero and helped to save him from being tried as a war criminal after the Holocaust was over. Ramadan contextualized this, saying his grandfather would not support a Nazi except as a nationalist and only supported the mufti because he opposed Zionism. Precisely. “Kill the Jews” is what the Palestinian cause and the Muslim Brotherhood are about, and why both seek to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East and the only state that is tolerant towards others. Packer held his ground manfully but neglected to mention that Ramadan’s grandfather had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic in the thirties and that the war against Israel in the hands of the Brotherhood and its offspring Hamas is a war against the Jews in precisely the sense that the Nazis conducted its precursor. In fact, the mufti — who is the George Washington of the Palestinian cause — was conducting a genocidal campaign against the Jews in the Twenties before Hitler got his going. Joan Wallach Scott supported Ramadan’s contextualization throughout, even when it came to rationalizing the murder of her own people.

When it was over I took a shower.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

This is a common species of wishful thinking and willful blindness. Its proponents imagine that Islam is a Religion of Peace™ with no anti-Semitic elements (you know the drill, Islam reveres the "People of the Book," etc.), but it was corrupted by the Nazis. Thus all one needs to do to solve this problem is to eliminate the Nazi elements and call Muslims back to the true teachings of the Qur'an, and the jihad will end. How wonderful! Except it's completely fictional, and based on ignorance or denial of the jihad doctrine, Islamic supremacism, and Qur'anic anti-Semitism.

"Roots of Islamic funamentalism [sic] lie in Nazi propaganda for Arab world, book claims," by Allan Hall in the Telegraph, April 21:

The roots of Islamic fanaticism can be traced to Adolf Hitler's radio messages broadcast around the Arab world during the Second World War, according to a new book.

"Your only hope for rescue is the destruction of the Jews before they destroy you!" Hitler said in a 1942 message, one of thousands broadcast across the Middle East in an attempt to woo the Arab world.

In a broadcast aimed at provoking an anti-Semitic uprising in Egypt, he said: "A large number of Jews who live in Egypt, along with Poles, Greeks, Armenians and Frenchmen, have guns and ammunition.

"Some Jews in Cairo have even asked the British authorities to set up machine guns on the roofs of their houses," he claimed.
But the Nazi's wartime broadcasts had remained a largely hidden chapter in the history of the war until the transmissions were unearthed by a US scholar, who believes they have fuelled continuing unrest in the Middle East.

"The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would have been over long ago were it not for the uncompromising, religiously inspired hatred of the Jews that was articulated and given assistance by Nazi propagandists and continued after the war by Islamists of various sorts," said Jeffrey Herf, a history professor at the University of Maryland....

Herf is not original with this roseate and fantastic view. Journalist Lawrence Wright writes in this vein in The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11:

Until the end of World War II ... Jews lived safely--although submissively--under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice [anti-Semitism]. After the war, Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

This is a common view, but in reality there is a strong native strain of anti-Semitism in Islam, which is rooted in the Qur'an. The Muslim holy book contains a great deal of material that forms the foundation for a hatred of Jews that has perdured throughout Islamic history. It is virulent and hard to eradicate. The Qur'an portrays the Jews as the craftiest, most persistent, and most implacable enemies of the Muslims -- and there is no Islamic authority that has moved to mitigate the most destructive interpretations of all this. The Qur'anic material on the Jews remains the prism through which far too many Muslims see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and Jews in general--to this day.

A vivid illustration of this came in 2004 from Islam Online, a website founded by, among others, the internationally influential Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in 1997. Although al-Qaradawi has won praise from Islamic scholar John Esposito for engaging in a "reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism, and human rights," that "reformist" impulse doesn't seem to carry over to his view of Jews (he has justified suicide bombings against Israeli civilians), or the view of them he has allowed to be published on Islam Online.

In 2004 the site posted an article titled "Jews as Depicted in the Qur'an," in which Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, the former head of the Fatwa Committee at the most respected institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, depicts Jews in a chillingly negative light, illustrated with abundant quotations from the Qur'an. Among other charges he levels at the Jews, Saqr says that they "used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah"; they "love to listen to lies"; they disobey Allah and ignore his commands; they wish "evil for people" and try to "mislead them"; and they "feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity." He adds that "it is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents," for "they are merciless and heartless." And each charge he follows with Qur'anic citations (including, among others, 3:75; 5:64; 3:181; 5:41; 5:13; 2:109; 3:120; 2:61; 2:74; 2:100; 59:13-14; 2:96; and 2:79).

Though he offers many examples of the alleged evil traits of the Jews supported by the Qur'an, Saqr doesn't mention the notorious Qur'anic passages that depict an angry Allah transforming Jews into apes and pigs: 2:63-66; 5:59-60; and 7:166. The first of those passages depicts Allah telling the Jews who "profaned the Sabbath": "Be as apes despicable!" It goes on to say that these accursed ones serve "as a warning example for their time and for all times to come." The second has Allah directing Muhammad to remind the "People of the Book" about "those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil." The third essentially repeats this, saying of the Sabbath-breaking Jews that when "in their insolence they transgressed (all) prohibitions," Allah said to them, "Be ye apes, despised and rejected."

In traditional Islamic theology these passages have not been considered to apply to all Jews. The classic Qur'anic commentator Ibn Kathir, whose commentary is widely distributed and respected among Muslims today, quotes earlier authorities saying that "those who violated the sanctity of the Sabbath were turned into monkeys, then they perished without offspring," and that they "only lived on the earth for three days, for no transformed person ever lives more than three days." While parts of the Qur'an are hostile to the Jews, Muhammad's curse, in this case, was limited to these Sabbath-breakers, not to all Jews.

However, that hasn't stopped contemporary jihadists from frequently referring to Jews as the "descendants of apes and swine." The implication is that today's Jews are bestial in character and are the enemies of Allah, just as the Sabbath-breakers were. The recently deceased grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who was the most respected cleric in the world among Sunni Muslims, called Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." Saudi sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam of the principal mosque in the holiest city in Islam, Mecca, said in a sermon that Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."

Another Saudi sheikh, Ba'd bin Abdallah al-Ajameh al-Ghamidi, made the connection explicit: "The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places ... is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam--which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam." A 1996 Hamas publication says that today's Jews are bestial in spirit, and this is a manifestation of the punishment of their forefathers. In January 2007, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas stated, "The sons of Israel are mentioned as those who are corrupting humanity on earth," referring to Qur'an 5:64.

All this shows that leading Muslim authorities approach the Qur'an not as a document rooted in history, but as a blueprint for understanding the world today. Likewise, Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr describes the Qur'anic teachings that because Jews "revolted against the Divine ordinances ... they found no warm reception in all countries where they tried to reside. Rather, they would either be driven out or live in isolation." Moreover, "Almighty Allah told us that He'd send to them people who'd pour on them rain of severe punishment that would last till the Day of Resurrection." Then comes a threat: "All this gives us glad tidings of the coming victory of Muslims over them once Muslims stick to strong faith and belief in Allah and adopt the modern means of technology."

The classic Qur'anic commentators not do not mitigate the Qur'an's words against Jews, but only add fuel to the fire. Ibn Kathir explained Qur'an 2:61 ("They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah") this way: "This Ayah [verse] indicates that the Children of Israel were plagued with humiliation, and that this will continue, meaning that it will never cease. They will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them, along with the disgrace that they feel inwardly." Another Middle Ages commentator of lingering influence, 'Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-Baidawi, explains the same verse this way: "The Jews are mostly humiliated and wretched either of their own accord, or out of coercion of the fear of having their jizya [punitive tax] doubled."

Ibn Kathir notes Islamic traditions that predict that at the end of the world, "the Jews will support the Dajjal (False Messiah), and the Muslims, along with 'Isa [Jesus], son of Mary, will kill the Jews." The idea in Islam that the end times will be marked by Muslims killing Jews comes from the prophet Muhammad himself, who said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'" This is, not unexpectedly, a favorite motif among contemporary jihadists. On March 30, 2007, a spokesman for Hamas, Dr. Ismail Radwan, said on Palestinian Authority television:

The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: "Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!"

We must remind our Arab and Muslim nation, its leaders and people, its scholars and students, remind them that Palestine and the Al Aqsa mosque will not be liberated through summits nor by international resolutions, but it will be liberated through the rifle. It will not be liberated through negotiations, but through the rifle, since this occupation knows no language but the language of force.... O Allah, strengthen Islam and Muslims, and bring victory to your Jihad-fighting worshipers, in Palestine and everywhere.... Allah take the oppressor Jews and Americans and their supporters!

The history of Jews who lived under Muslim rule is a more or less unbroken record of theologically sanctioned humiliation and wretchedness. Like the Christians, Jews were allowed to practice their religion within restrictions, but they were seldom allowed to forget their humiliation. Although the strictness with which the laws of dhimmitude (the subservient status of Jews and Christians) were enforced varied, they were never abolished, and during times of relaxation the subject populations always lived in fear that they would be enforced with new stringency. Muslim rulers did not forget that the Qur'an mandates that both Jews and Christians must "feel themselves subdued." One notable instance is recounted by the Arab historian Phillip Hitti: "The caliph al-Mutawakkil in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses, level their graves even with the ground, wear outer garments of honey color, i.e. yellow, put two honey-colored patches on the clothes of their slaves, ... and ride only on mules and asses with wooden saddles marked by two pomegranate-like balls on the cantle." A millennium later, in 1888, little had changed. A Tunisian Jew noted:

The Jew is prohibited in this country to wear the same clothes as a Muslim and may not wear a red tarbush. He can be seen to bow down with his whole body to a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege of striking him in the face, a gesture that can prove to be of the gravest consequence. Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In such matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has been the custom from time immemorial.

In 1291 Isaac ben Samuel, a noted Kabbalist and Palestinian Jew, sought refuge in a Christian-controlled area of Spain after the collapse of the last Crusader kingdom in the Levant. He explained, "For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew. For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, 'Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael [Islam]. They [the rabbis] plead for mercy before the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, 'Master of the World, either let us live beneath Thy shadow or else beneath that of the children of Edom' (Talmud, Gittin 17a)."

Ben Samuel's choice of Christian Spain is paradoxical, as Muslim Spain was supposed to have been a famous exception to the oppression of Jews that prevailed elsewhere among both Muslims and Christians. Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong enunciates the common wisdom when she says that "until 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively together in Muslim Spain--a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in Europe." Even the U.S. State Department has proclaimed that "during the Islamic period in Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society in which vibrant exchanges of ideas took place."

Yet the philosopher Maimonides, a Jew who lived for a time in Muslim Spain and then fled that supposedly tolerant and pluralistic land, remarked, "You know, my brethren, that on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us....No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have....We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, and absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear."

Notably, Maimonides directed that Jews could teach rabbinic law to Christians, but not to Muslims. For Muslims, he said, will interpret what they are taught "according to their erroneous principles and they will oppress us. [F]or this reason ... they hate all [non-Muslims] who live among them." But the Christians, he said, "admit that the text of the Torah, such as we have it, is intact"--as opposed to the Islamic view that the Jews and Christians have corrupted their scriptures. Christians, continued Maimonides, "do not find in their religious law any contradiction with ours."

Even María Rosa Menocal, in her romantic and fantastic hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, acknowledges the second-class status to which Jews and Christians were relegated there. "In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax--no Muslims paid taxes--and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals."

According to historian Richard Fletcher, "Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch." On December 30, 1066, about four thousand Jews in Granada were murdered by rioting Muslim mobs--more than would be killed in the Crusaders' infamous Rhineland pogroms of the mid-twelfth century. What enraged the Granadan Muslims was the political power of the Jewish vizier Samuel ibn Naghrila and his son Joseph: the mob resented the fact that these men had authority over Muslims, which they saw as a "breach of sharia." The mob was incited to kill the Jews by a poem composed by Muslim jurist Abu Ishaq: "I myself arrived in Granada and saw that these Jews were meddling in its affairs. ... So hasten to slaughter them as a good work whereby you will earn God's favor, and offer them up in sacrifice, a well-fattened ram."

The mob heeded his call. A Muslim chronicler (and later sultan of Granada), 'Abd Allah, said that "both the common people and the nobles were disgusted by the cunning of the Jews, the notorious changes they had brought in the order of things, and the positions they occupied in violation of their pact [of second-class status]." He recounted that the mob "put every Jew in the city to the sword and took vast quantities of their property."

"Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews..." -- Qur'an 5:82. Hitler didn't write the Qur'an.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Kuwaiti MP: 'The War Foretold By the Prophet Muhammad... Is Drawing Near...

Kuwaiti MP: 'The War Foretold By the Prophet Muhammad... Is Drawing Near...

This Is a War Of Religion, Not Just a War Between Arabs and Israelis'

At a rally of the Kuwaiti Student Union in support of the Palestinian cause, Kuwait poet Ahmad Al-Kandari led the crowd in chanting, "We are the soldiers of Hamas, and Jihad is our path." Kuwaiti MP Jama'an Al-Harbash told the crowd: "The war foretold by the Prophet Muhammad... is drawing near... this is a war of religion, not just a war between Arabs and Israelis"; Kuwaiti student leader 'Abd Al-'Aziz Dahi Al-Fadhli said "Today is the day for declaring Jihad... There is no path of reconciliation and negotiations – Jihad and Jihad alone"; and Kuwaiti Salafi leader Hamed Al-'Ali called to establish a Kuwaiti Hamas movement.[/size]

The following are excerpts from the rally, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on March 29, 2010.

The Obama Administration is sending conflicting and confusing messages both to Iran and to those who fear an Iranian nuclear weapon. According to The New York Times, defense secretary Robert M. Gates sent a top secret memorandum to White House officials bemoaning the fact that the United States simply has no policy in place to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. At the same time, it is telling Israel that although Iran has threatened to wipe it off the map, the Jewish state should not take military action to prevent a second Holocaust. Indeed former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has participated in White House discussions concerning the Middle East, has threatened that if Israel tries to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapon facilities, the United States is fully capable of shooting Israeli jets out of the air.

Although Gates subsequently denied that his memo, which he acknowledges writing, was intended as a “wake up call”, a senior White House official has confirmed that it was just that. There is no evidence, however, that the White House is prepared to confront the grave threat posed by a nuclear Iran. The policy that seems to be emerging from the White House is one called “containment.” But what is containment? It is little more than an acknowledgment of failure. Containment implies that the United States will not succeed in preventing Iran from securing nuclear weapons, but rather it will accept such an eventuality and seek to deter the use of nuclear weapons by threats and by the deployment of defensive measures. The analogy that proponents of containment point to is North Korea, which has nuclear weapons but has thus far been “contained” from using them. But there are vast differences between North Korea and Iran.

North Korea is a secular Communist regime that is risk averse and that has no sworn existential enemies. The goal of its leaders is simply to remain in power and maintain their totalitarian control over their people. Iran is a theocratic, apocalyptic regime that believes that it has a religious obligation to destroy Israel and threaten the United States. Iran, unlike North Korea, also operates through surrogates, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and other smaller terrorist groups. They could hand-off nuclear material to such groups, or to sympathetic individuals, for use as dirty bombs directed against its enemies.

When he ran for president, Barak Obama pledged not to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. He claimed to understand that a nuclear Iran would be a game changer and a direct threat to the United States and its allies. He now seems to be softening his position and that of the United States government.

If in fact the United States is prepared to accept a nuclear Iran, then it has no right to require Israel to accept the risks posed by a nuclear armed country that has overtly threatened its destruction. Every country in the world has the inherent right to protect its citizens from a nuclear attack. Israel, a nation that Obama has himself acknowledged was built on the ashes of one Holocaust, certainly has the right to take military action to prevent a second Holocaust, especially at the hands of a country that has explicitly threatened to wipe it off the map.

The world ignored the explicit threats of one tyrant who threatened to destroy the Jewish people in the 1930s, and he nearly succeeded in the 1940s. Israel cannot be expected to ignore Hitler’s successor, who while denying the first Holocaust, threatens a second one.

The United States has promised to regard a nuclear attack on Israel as a nuclear attack on its own country, but Iran does not credit such threats, since it appears that the Obama Administration has already broken its promise not to accept a nuclear Iran. Elie Wiesel put it well when he said that the Holocaust has taught the Jewish people to “believe the threats of our enemies more than the promises of our friends.” Iran’s promise to destroy Israel must be taken seriously, not only by Israel but by the United States. If the United States is not prepared to stop Iran from acquiring the nuclear weapons necessary to wipe Israel off the map, then Israel must be prepared to protect itself.

I am not suggesting that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. I don’t know enough about the military considerations that should go into any such an existential decision. But I am asserting, in unqualified terms, that Israel has an absolute right–legally, morally, politically–to take such an action if it deems it necessary to protect its citizens from a threatened nuclear attack. This is especially the case, if Secretary Gates was correct when he wrote in his memorandum that the United States “lacks a policy to thwart Iran,” as The New York Times headline announced. Someone must thwart Iran. An Iran with nuclear weapons simply poses too great a threat to the world to be accepted– or “contained.”

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Most observers, right or left, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, would agree that Israeli-American relations are the worst they have been in memory. Among the many indications is that only 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think President Barack Obama’s administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith Research poll taken during the last week of March on behalf of The Jerusalem Post. Given how much Israelis love and admire (and emigrate to) America, this level of mistrust is all the more remarkable.

Commentators on the left, of course, blame Israel. For them, this is a no-brainer; blaming Israel is as natural as breathing. One just does it. Furthermore, Israel is headed by a conservative prime minister, and America is presided over by the most pro-left president in its history.

Meanwhile, commentators on the right are virtually unanimous in supporting Israel. This is not simply an anti-Obama, pro-conservative-Netanyahu reflex, however. It stems from a variety of reasons:

First, Israel is our staunchest ally. Among other things, Israel votes with us in the United Nations more often than any other country, and it provides us with uniquely important technological know-how and intelligence.

Second, conservatives’ values are closer to Israel’s values than perhaps those of any other nation. As President Harry Truman said, “Israel is the embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

Third, while a rift with Israel hurts Israel, it hurts America at least as much (as we shall see) and does not make Palestinians any more likely to make peace with the Jewish state. Recall, the Palestinians unleashed mass terror against Israel after a left-leaning Israeli prime minister agreed to give the Palestinians 97 percent of the territory conquered in 1967 and 3 percent more from Israel itself. Why, then, would the Palestinians make peace with Israel now, when half of the Palestinians are governed by Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction? Because Obama humiliated the Israeli prime minister during the latter’s visit to Washington — over Israeli plans to build 1,600 apartments in Jerusalem?

Fourth, the greatest international threat today emanates from Iran, a threat that will be exponentially increased if Iran is not prevented from developing nuclear weapons. A weakened Israel means an emboldened Iran. And this frightens conservatives more than it does the world’s left and Obama.

Finally, there is a fifth reason tens of millions of Americans, many conservative commentators, support Israel and worry about America if American support for Israel wanes.

To the left in America and around the world, this reason is dangerous nonsense. But for a vast number of America’s Christians, many Jews and even many non-religious conservatives, it is deeper than any military or political reason. The reason is based on a verse in Genesis in which God, referring to the Jewish people, says to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”

One need not be a Jew or Christian or even believe in God to appreciate that this verse is as accurate a prediction of the future as humanity has ever been given by the ancient world. The Jewish people have suffered longer and more horribly than any other living people. But they are still around. Their historic enemies are all gone. Those who cursed the Jews were indeed cursed.

And those who blessed the Jews were indeed blessed. The most blessed country for more than 200 years has been the United States. It has also been the most blessed place Jews have ever lived in. Is this a coincidence? Many of us think not.

Those who curse the Jews today seem to be cursed. The most benighted civilization today is the Arab world. One could make a plausible case that the Arab world’s preoccupation with Jew-hatred and destroying Israel is decisive in keeping the Arab world from progressing. The day the Arab world makes peace with the existence of the tiny Jewish state in its midst, the Arab world will begin its ascent.

The converse is what worries tens of millions of Americans: The day America begins to abandon Israel, America will begin its descent.

Israel shares America’s values, such as liberty, an independent judiciary, a free press, freedom of religion, free speech and women’s equality. The Arab and Muslim worlds have none of these. Those facts — and America’s Judeo-Christian roots — make support of Israel, no matter what the Arab and Muslim “street” feels about America, a moral lynchpin of American foreign policy.

This administration’s desire to have America liked in the Arab and Muslim worlds therefore has to mean altering that lynchpin. You cannot protect Israel and strive to be liked in the Arab and Muslim worlds at the same time. And you cannot weaken that protection without weakening America’s moral values, which form the basis of America’s greatness.

Even aside from compromising America’s moral essence, weakening American support of Israel will only strengthen the America-hating Islamists. The notion that the primitive monsters of the Taliban, Hamas, al-Qaida and the like will become pro-American — or just stop attacking America – if America weakens its support of Israel betrays an ignorance of evil that is frightening.

So there is nothing to gain — and America’s soul to lose — by weakening, or by even seeming to weaken, American support for Israel.

In 1968, Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman turned philosopher and author of the classic work “The True Believer,” wrote in The Los Angeles Times:

“The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us.”

Hoffer concluded: “I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.”

Genesis was right.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Comments by David G. Littman, NGO Representative UN-Geneva: Association for World Education (AWE); World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ)

I received an email this morning - indirectly - by an Arab Affairs Correspondent from an American news agency who was in the midst of, as she explained:

I'm writing a piece about the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Apparently the OIC is planning to set up a human rights division within its ranks, following a meeting between its secretary general and the UN high commissioner for human rights. I'd like to know what your opinion is of this move. Do you think this is a PR move? Is it too little, too late? Do you think this kind of commission can be effective and will bring about any changes in the situation of human rights in Muslim countries? Kindly get back to me as soon as you can so that I can quote you in a written item...you can see more details here.

One 'click' provided a glimpse at a fascinating meeting at the OIC Headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia between OIC Secretary General Professor Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mrs. Navanethem Pillay (below). This was a clear follow-up to Ihsanoglu's statement made seven weeks earlier at the UN Human Rights Council, which was quoted at length in our 19 April Jihad Watch piece: Let me conclude on a happy note.

* * * * *
Although our opinion was received "too late" to be used, it might be useful to share it with Jihad Watch readers worldwide, especially in view of the OIC's very noteworthy information that: "The High Commissioner congratulated the Secretary General on the prospective establishment of the Commission and assured full support of her Office in its formative phase." This is it:

Two days ago I posted a long piece on Jihad Watch (with a video) to enable people worldwide to 'see' what is happening at the Human Rights Council. I have copied below a few lines (in red) from my accompanying essay which quotes OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu when he spoke at the 13th session of the HRC on 1st March 2010. You have my 'opinion' just below [it follows here without that quotation]: * * * * *

To sum up, I'd recommend that delightful 'story' of the Emperor by Hans Christian Anderson when only a child dares say "The Emperor is naked." - What the OIC will be offering to the world is a stark naked 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam with Sharia-gate Human Rights 'clothing', all this as "a paradigm shift within the OIC" - and a panacea for human rights worldwide. When will the world finally 'see' that evident truth and cry out that the OIC is as naked as the fairy-tale Emperor?

* * * * *
Hillel C. Neuer, the very active and effective NGO Executive Director of UN Watch in Geneva, yesterday posted an excellent denunciation concerning the publication by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on 19 April of "a press release misrepresented the one-sided nature of the UN Human Rights Council's permanent investigative mandate on Israel, currently held by Richard Falk, who happens to be America's leading promoter of 9/11 conspiracy theories." This press release was released on the same day as the High Commissioner was greeted in Jeddah by the OIC Secretary General and 'briefed' on The Independent Permanent OIC Human Rights Commission; and that of our lengthy article here.

Mrs. Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on the Secretary General Professor Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the OIC Headquarters in Jeddah as part of her visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In welcoming the guests, the Secretary General appreciated the confident, objective and impartial manner in which the High Commissioner had performed the difficult task with a sincerity of purpose since the assumption of the important office.

The Secretary General informed the High Commissioner that the OIC was on the verge of establishing an Independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights. The statute of the Commission was near finalization and likely to be entered into force following adoption by the forthcoming Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers due to be held in Dushanbe next month. He emphasized that the establishment of the Commission must be viewed as a landmark event and a most positive development in the four decade long history of the Organization. Briefing the High Commissioner on the OIC Human Rights Commission, the Secretary General expressed the hope that the establishment of the Commission will introduce a paradigm shift within the OIC in the way universal human rights and freedoms flow together with Islamic values to offer a coherent and strong system aimed at facilitating the full enjoyment of all human rights in the OIC member states. The High Commissioner congratulated the Secretary General on the prospective establishment of the Commission and assured full support of her Office in its formative phase. She also thanked Secretary General for his leadership and contribution to the successful outcome of the Durban Review Conference and indicated her hope for a continued cooperation with the OIC in the future.

The meeting afforded the opportunity of exchange of views on the whole range of issues pertaining to the OIC's engagement with the Office of the High Commissioner and ended with the agreement to continue to build on the cooperation and coordination between the two Organizations.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

Islamist terrorist bombings in the London subways. Buddhists beheaded by fanatical Muslims in Thailand. Hurricanes and Live 8 aside, the global event horizon these days seems to encompass little else but revolutionary (actually reactionary) Islamic violence. How much worse could it get?

Much worse.

So far the bombings, attacks, murders and beheadings have been the province of mere jihadis—basically mundane, albeit dangerous, Islamic fundamentalists. Islamic fundamentalists, in a nutshell, reject modernity;1 that is, they anathematize the mainstream of Western—and, by now, global—thought which has predominated since the Enlightenment, predicated upon: a Cartesian cleavage between reason and revelation, politically-enforced separation of religion and state and optimistic (well-nigh utopian) faith in science and technology. Many Christian fundamentalists share this antipathy for modernity. But jihadis (perhaps somewhere between 1 and 10% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims) differ from Jerry Falwell in that, for them, history has taken a horrible wrong turn. The religion of the final and perfect revelation of Allah to mankind still lags, in number of adherents, to that superseded tritheism known as Christianity (with its 2 billion members). Islamic political power, regnant from Morocco to Indonesia and from the Hungarian forests to the African savanna in 1491, was first eclipsed by Europeans and now is dwarfed by the American imperium and its Cowboy Christian Caesar (triply galling to Usamah bin Ladin, as well as to Democrats and the French) and betrayed internally by faux Muslim leaders like Mubarak, Musharraf and the Saudi princes.

The cure for Islamic religious, political and cultural malaise, according to jihadi fundamentalism, is simple (albeit easier said than done): replacing fake Muslim rulers and governments with truly Islamic ones that impose and enforce shari`ah, or Islamic law. (Of course, “that depends on what your definition of ‘Islamic law,’ is.” Wahhabi? Turkish? Nigerian? Iranian?) And of course the preferred way to get such leadership in place is through regime change, whether violent (the former Taliban in Afghanistan) or more populist (the Islamic Revolution in Iran). Jihadi ideology also calls for an end to outside “imperialism”—i.e., American influence and intervention—in the Muslim world in general and the Middle East in particular (especially Arabia, the site of the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina).

There is another strain of fundamentalist ideology, however, that may not be willing to wait for jihadi governments to come to power: Mahdism. Al-Mahdi is “the rightly-guided one” who, in Islamic traditions allegedly going back to Muhammad (and nowhere to be found in the Qur’an), will come before The End of time to usher in a worldwide Islamic state with a little help from his returned prophet friend Jesus.2 Mahdism is believed by many (including scholars, who should know better) to be the province only of the Shi`is, but many of the most successful Mahdist movements in history have been Sunni. Most prominent here would be Ibn Tumart’s al-Muwahhids (Almohads) who ruled from Portugal to Tunisia, 1130-1269 CE, and Muhammad Ahmad’s Sudanese Mahdists—about whom the movie Khartoum, starring Charlton Heston and Sir Laurence Olivier was made—who ruled Sudan from 1885-1898. Another famous Mahdist movement, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, was the attempt to overthrow the Saudi regime in 1979: one Juhayman al-Utaybi declared his brother-in-law Muhammad al-Qahtani to be the Mahdi and led several hundred armed followers to occupy the main mosque in Mecca (eventually all were either killed or captured and then executed). Scores of other self-styled mahdis have arisen over the last millennium of Islamic history. If nothing else, Mahdism is certainly a powerful means of expressing dissatisfaction with extant Islamic government.

And Mahdism shares many characteristics with mere jihadism, the most important of which are: a yearning (indeed demand) for Islamic law and a burning desire to restore Islamic rule to its former environs and, in fact, to engineer the creation of a global caliphate. But Mahdist movements “are to fundamentalist uprisings what nuclear weapons are to conventional ones: triggered by the same detonating agents3 but far more powerful in scope and effect.”4 Once a charismatic Muslim leader becomes convinced he is the Mahdi, all bets are off. The Mahdi (and each one is of course convinced he is THE, not simply a, Mahdi) will, according to the Islamic traditions, be directed by Allah to restore the Prophetic caliphate and, as such, is not bound by the letter of the Islamic law. For example, both Ibn Tumart and Muhammad Ahmad declared that they alone were capable of interpreting the Qur’an, so any previous opinions and commentaries were relegated to irrelevance. And of course the opposition to them by establishment religious figures—for both of these men, as do most Mahdist, led revolutions against existing Islamic governments5—only served to reinforce their Mahdist claims, since true Muslims could recognize the Mahdi. Anyone claiming to be the Mahdi, then, is largely unfettered by any norms, Islamic or otherwise. Ibn Tumart and his leadership, for example, killed tens of thousands OF THEIR OWN FOLLOWERS deemed lukewarm in their support. And Muhammad Ahmad, who had Charles Gordon decapitated and his head displayed, may have proved just as bloodthirsty had he not died of malaria some six months after taking Khartoum.

There is, today, no one claiming to be the Mahdi—at least not yet. A number of Arabic books and websites have begun speculating whether Usamah bin Ladin might be him.6 Certainly no one else in the Islamic world has the stature to even attempt such a claim. Bin Ladin’s charisma, mysterious whereabouts, ability to strike and hurt even the American imperium and ongoing criticism of existing (illegitimate) Islamic rulers may not quite qualify him for the Mahdi’s ring of power—but they get him closer, certainly, than anyone else. What if he were to seize it? No doubt the vast majority of the world’s Muslims would reject such a claim out of hand. Many who see Bin Ladin now as something of a Muslim Che Guevara would certainly renounce him as Mahdi, but the small percentage that would accept such a claim would be intensely devoted and fanatical. If that amounts to only 1 percent of the world’s Muslims, the Mahdi would have 13 million potential suicide bombers.

And make no mistake: Mahdists would have even fewer constraints on their behaviour than do jihadis. Since the end result of the Mahdi’s plans would be, they believe, a global caliphate nothing would he asked would be beyond his followers: detonating a nuke in Vegas or Manhattan, intentionally infecting oneself with plague or smallpox and then criss-crossing American aiports, suicide-bombing Christian day care centers in the Midwest. Helping the Mahdi restore Islam to planetary predominance would obtain one even more glory than the promised 72 huris in Paradise. And were Bin Ladin (or anyone else) to take power in, say, Arabia as the Mahdi, the entire world (even the French) would soon be waxing nostalgic about the Saudis.

Even if Bin Ladin eschews a Mahdi claim, someone eventually will make it. The Mahdi is often associated with a mujaddid, a “renewer” that according to other Islamic traditions will come every 100 years to reinvigorate Islam. And considering that the 16th Muslim century begins in 2076, the American tercentenary may be met with more than normal fireworks.
1 See my article “Islamic Fundamentalism,” Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism ( New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 235-240.

3 Such as perceived illegitimate “Islamic” governments; a perceived diminution of Islamic norms; moral laxity of rulers and/or society; interference by foreign powers (usually, but not always, non-Islamic ones; the Sudanese Mahdi, for instance, despised the Ottoman Turks although they were Muslims).

4Ibid., p. 1.

5 Ibn Tumart led the overthrow of the previous al-Murabit (Almoravid) sultanate, while Muhammad Ahmad and his followers ejected the Ottoman Turks, Egyptians and British from Sudan.

6Holiest Wars, especially chapter 6: “Who will be the next Mahdi?”, pp. 150ff.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.]

Though needing to handle dozens of difficult issues around the world, President Obama seems obsessed with one: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Obama’s administration has been on the warpath with Israel from the beginning, picking fights over issues that have been around for a long time. These include where Jews can live and build in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria (the West Bank); removing checkpoints that stop terrorists; and easing restrictions on the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. Yet Obama has been silent regarding anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement, and the upsurge in rioting, violence, and terrorist attacks sponsored by the Palestinian Authority.

An innocuous announcement of approval for building permits in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit gave Obama the opportunity he, perhaps, was waiting for — he bombarded Israel with unprecedented wrath and scorn. Out of proportion and unusually harsh, Obama’s disappointment seemed irrational.

If Obama can’t set some parameters for our allies, how is he going to set some for the mullahs?

Sanger also wrote:

Obama’s team seems to understand that if they lose that contest of wills [with Israel], the rest of their foreign policy agenda is also threatened.

Assuming this is true, Obama is tying Israeli concessions to U.S. moves to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons, and to other issues as well. This policy makes Israel a scapegoat for Obama’s failures.

It’s those Jews who want to build homes in Jerusalem that prevent the U.S. from stopping Iran, North Korea, and the Taliban! David Petraeus has been quoted as implying that America’s support for Israel is harming allied war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It’s a wonder the Jews aren’t blamed for global warming.

The danger of Obama’s attack is not only that it shifts blame for difficulties the West faces in its wars against Islamists to Israel, but that it makes Israel responsible for the threat from Iran. This is blood libel; it has been floating around for some years by extremists. Coming from the White House, however, it now has legitimacy.

Outrageous as the charge is, it lends support to the kind of Jew-hatred preached by Rev. Jeremiah Wright and some of Obama’s friends. Such charges, hints, and implications fuel a classic anti-Semitism waiting to be ignited.

Obama’s attack on Israel is not merely an attack on a country, but a country whose government is predominantly Jewish. By casting Israel as the guilty party at a time when Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, and a host of radical Islamist jihadists seek Israel’s destruction and are significantly more worthy of rebuke, Obama has engaged in demonizing Israeli Jews.

Obama’s attack on Israel is not unwitting or unintended. It is the result of two decades of brainwashing by his spiritual and moral mentors. And it is the harpoon of a strategy to isolate Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and to bring Israel to its knees.

If Netanyahu resists Obama’s demands, he will be portrayed as insulting the president, preventing confrontation with Iran, and harming U.S. military activity. He also risks losing American military assistance and support in the UN. Resistance from Netanyahu could also lead to greater efforts to investigate Israel’s nuclear facility and destroy its nuclear capacity.

If Netanyahu gives in to Obama, he jeopardizes Israel’s security and its claims in Judea and Samaria.

By making Israeli compliance a personal issue, a measure of his strength, Obama has created a situation which, no matter what it does, Israel will lose.

In the past, in order to avoid direct diplomatic clashes, ambiguity has often worked in Israel’s favor. Obama has whittled down that breathing room — obligating Netanyahu to state clearly what Israel’s position is, not only in Jerusalem, but in all contested areas, and to remove Israel’s legitimate interests and concerns from the gambling table.

Obama’s bold move, putting the prestige of his office and his personal interests on the line against Israel as a demonstration of authority and strength, may turn out to be an example of carelessness and weakness. That would be unfortunate for America, for Israel, and for the world.

__________________O IsraelThe LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.